I went out with my hair down yesterday. It was curly and a little bit frizzy. “Your hair is disgusting,” a guy on a bike once told me.

I always hear comments like, “Hey, Shika!” when I’m walking down the street. I don’t get the link between curly hair and the football player Shikabala. I also get racist comments because of my skin color. A kid once started singing the word “chocolate” when he saw me, like that song from one of Heneidy’s films.

My dark skin is not a bad thing. It’s actually the traditional Egyptian skin color. I’m not African-American. I’m not saying that being African-American would be a bad thing. But the people who comment on my skin tone aren’t exactly white. So, I don’t understand why they think of me as odd. So odd they just can’t hold back their comments, apparently. I even get these comments from people who are the same color as me.

I just don’t understand how these people think. I feel sorry for the children who tell me these things. They say things they don’t understand. And they’ll continue to do so.

“Your hair is disgusting,” a guy said to me once.

BuSSy is a performing arts project that documents and gives voice to censored untold stories about gender in different communities in Egypt. The project organizes storytelling workshops and performances where women and men step on stage to share stories about harassment, rape, gender discrimination, honor killing, forced marriage, Female genital mutilation, motherhood, domestic violence, child abuse, mass sexual assaults and many others, from different communities and cities in Egypt.